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Wednesday, 21 March 2012

Mitt Romney has won the Republican primary in
Illinois, his latest win on the road to decide who will contest
November's poll against Barack Obama.

Mr Romney has won 47% of the votes, compared with 35% for Rick Santorum, with nearly all votes counted.

Sending a message to President Obama at a victory party in a suburb of Chicago, Mr Romney said: "We've had enough."

Ron Paul polled 9% in Illinois and Newt Gingrich was on 8%; neither candidate campaigned extensively in the state.

"I'm
running for president because I have the experience and the vision to
get us out of this mess," said Mr Romney, as his victory became evident.

Illinois sends 54 delegates to the Republican convention, and Mr Romney hopes to maintain his momentum.

However, Illinois's delegates are not determined by the statewide vote.

Individual
delegates are listed on the ballot in each of the state's 18
congressional districts and are identified by the candidate they
support.

Mr Santorum's campaign did not successfully file for the
primary ballot in parts of Illinois, meaning he automatically cedes of
those 10 delegates.

However, addressing supporters on Tuesday
evening, Mr Santorum said he had polled well in Illinois in areas "that
conservatives and Republicans populate".

"We're very happy about that and we're happy about the delegates we're going to get, too," he said.

The candidates had clashed in Illinois over the economy.

On
Monday Mr Santorum had said he "didn't care about the unemployment
rate", and told supporters the presidential campaign was about smaller
government and winning back individual and social freedom.

Mr
Romney jumped on those remarks later in the day, telling students in
Peoria, Illinois "one of the people who is running also for the
Republican nomination today said that he doesn't care about the
unemployment rate".

"It does bother me. I want to get people back to work," Mr Romney said.

Later Mr Santorum told supporters: "The economy is a big issue. Unemployment is a big issue."

'Magic number'

Mr
Romney won a convincing victory in Puerto Rico's primary over the
weekend, amassing 83% of the votes, but lost to Mr Santorum in recent
contests in the South.

A candidate needs to accumulate 1,144 delegates to the August convention in order to secure the nomination.

Analysts
say the current figures make that an almost impossible task for Mr
Santorum, who has spoken openly in recent weeks about winning enough
delegates to stop Mr Romney taking the crown.

Such an outcome
would lead to a competitive vote at the Tampa convention, in which Mr
Santorum feels he could overcome Mr Romney.

After the Puerto Rico
result, Mr Romney has 521 delegates. Mr Santorum has 253 delegates,
former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has 136 and Ron Paul had 50,
according to an Associated Press tally.

Mr Romney's well-financed
campaign and its allies have already spent $2.5m in adverts in the
state, and insists that Mr Santorum cannot hope to win the delegate race
and should drop out.

Mr Santorum has vowed to continue,
"competing in every state", citing tepid support for Mr Romney even in
states the former Massachusetts governor has won.

On Monday, Mr Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, said he would "go out and compete in every state".

"I
think it's going to be very difficult as this goes on for anybody to
get that magic number," Mr Santorum said in an interview with CBS News,
adding that chances were increasing of the nomination being decided at
the convention.

After his Puerto Rico win, Mr Romney described the result as an "extraordinary victory".

"Those people who don't think Latinos will vote for a Republican need to take a look at Puerto Rico," he said.

Some
observers thought Mr Santorum, a devout Catholic and opponent of
abortion and gay marriage, might do well in the predominantly Roman
Catholic territory.

But he angered many last week when he
suggested Puerto Rico needed to make English its official language if it
wanted to become the 51st US state.

The 3.7 million inhabitants
of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean island - which is currently a
self-governing US commonwealth territory - will vote in November in a
statehood referendum.

Tuesday, 20 March 2012

A South African court has ruled that the decision to drop corruption charges against President Jacob Zuma can be reviewed.

The charges were dropped just weeks before the 2009 election which led to Mr Zuma becoming president.

The court agreed with a request from the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) to challenge the decision.

The judges said judicial reviews were the "best guarantee against tyranny, now and in the future".

Mr
Zuma is facing increased criticism from some members of the governing
African National Congress (ANC) ahead of its decision in December on
whether to retain him as its leader for the next election, scheduled for
2014.

The ANC candidate would be the strong favourite to become president.

The
corruption charges relate to a controversial $5bn (£3.4bn) 1999 arms
deal, which led to Mr Zuma's financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, being
convicted of soliciting a bribe in 2005.

After Shaik's
conviction, Mr Zuma was sacked as deputy president before being charged
himself - he has always denied any wrongdoing.

Backing the DA's
request for a judicial review into the National Prosecuting Authority
decision to drop the charges against Mr Zuma, the judges wrote that the
concept "means that none of us is above the law".

"It is a
concept that we, as a nation, must cherish, nurture and protect. We must
be intent on ensuring that it is ingrained in the national psyche. It
is our best guarantee against tyranny, now and in the future."

The DA also wants the prosecutors to reveal why the charges were dropped.

Facebook's upcoming share sale could value the company to be worth as much as $100bn (£64bn)

Yahoo filed a lawsuit against Facebook Monday, alleging that the social
media giant infringed on 10 of its patents related to advertising,
privacy, customization, messaging and social networking.

The
launch of the full-on patent battle follows last month's media reports
of Yahoo's attempt to force Facebook to pay licensing fees for 10-20
patents.

"Yahoo has invested substantial resources in research
and development through the years, which has resulted in numerous
patented innovations of technology that other companies have licensed,"
said Yahoo in an e-mailed statement Monday. "Unfortunately, the matter
with Facebook remains unresolved and we are compelled to seek redress in
federal court. We are confident that we will prevail."

According
to the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in San Jose, Calif.,
Yahoo is hoping that Facebook will be ordered to pay "all damages caused
to Yahoo by reason of Facebook's infringement."

Facebook, which
said it learned of Yahoo's lawsuit at the same time as the media, said
it will defend itself "vigorously against these puzzling actions."

"We're
disappointed [in] Yahoo, a longtime business partner of Facebook and a
company that has substantially benefited from its association with
Facebook, has decided to resort to litigation," a Facebook spokesperson
added.

The FBI can't get into a pimp's Android phone—so it wants Google to hand over the keys.

In
addition to accessing the phone, agents also want Google to turn over
e-mail searches, Web searches, GPS tracking data, websites visited, and
text messages. A federal judge has agreed. Hopefully, digital devices
can make life hard out there for a pimp—but the case also reminds us
just how much data smartphones generate on even innocuous users.

Pimpin' Hoes Daily

In
2005, San Diego's Dante Dears was sentenced to state prison for
founding and running a group called "Pimpin' Hoes Daily" (PHD). The name
wasn't braggadocio; it was mere description. Before Dears pled guilty
in the middle of his 2005 trial, one minor female testified how Dears
had recruited her out of a homeless shelter.

"He told me he was
going to help take care of me and be there for me," she told the court.
"He told me what to do and how to do it and said we would make money
that way... I was tired of living on the streets."

Her $500 a
night went straight to Dears, though, who "took care of her" in his own
special way. As San Diego's Union Tribune reported, Dears found out the
woman had spoken to a man who wanted to help her get off the streets. So
Dears "beat her up in the back seat of his Cadillac and then forced her
to get into the car's trunk, she testified. While in the trunk, she was
driven from East Main Street in El Cajon to Hotel Circle in Mission
Valley, she testified."

A local TV channel noted that the girl,
only 15 at the time, was released in Hotel Circle, "bleeding and
bruised." She left prostitution after the experience and went back to
her mother.

Dears went to prison. When he got out in 2009, he
quickly violated his parole on three separate occasions and went back to
jail for a year and half. Upon his release in May 2011, an FBI
informant says he saw Dears return to his old activities. Shackled with a
GPS monitor, Dears had to stay off the streets, but he was allegedly
able to continue his "telephone pimping" with the help of a Samsung
Android phone.

On June 10, 2011, the FBI source met with Dears in
his apartment in Chula Vista for nearly three hours. During that time,
he watched Dears "taking several telephone calls where he discussed the
night's prostitution activities. He also sent multiple text messages
throughout the evening. Shortly after sending a message, a woman would
arrive at the apartment and give Dears money.”

The FBI put the
target under physical surveillance and observed him one night using the
phone “frequently for a period of nearly 6 hours”—despite the fact that
he had denied even owning a cell phone for months to his parole agent.

Confronted
with the evidence, Dears said the phone belonged to his sister. He
eventually turned it over to the state parole agent, but the FBI says
Dears refused to unlock the device. (Dears had signed a waiver to his
Fourth Amendment right search rights, so his home and property could be
legally searched at any time without a court order. His parole
conditions prevented him from doing anything to hide or lock digital
files.)

The keys to the kingdom

The FBI, which
didn't have the right to search the phone without a warrant, obtained
one on February 13, 2012. They took the phone from the parole agent and
sent it off to an FBI Regional Computer Forensics Lab in Southern
California. There, technicians “attempted to gain access to the contents
of the memory of the cellular telephone in question, but were unable to
do so,” said the FBI. They were defeated by, of all things, Android's
“pattern lock”—not always notable for its high security.

Technicians
apparently mis-entered the pattern enough times to lock the phone,
which could only be unlocked using the phone owner's Google account
credentials. But Dears wasn't cooperating, and the FBI didn't have his
credentials. So it was back to a judge with a new warrant application,
filed on March 9, 2012. That application, which was apparently supposed
to be sealed, was instead made public and was located today by security
researcher Chris Soghoian.

In it, the FBI asks for a warrant to be served on Google. It wants to know:

All text messages sent and received from the phone, including photo and video messages

Any e-mail addresses or instant messenger accounts used on the phone

“Verbal and/or written instructions for overriding the ‘pattern lock’ installed on the” phone

All search terms, Internet history, and GPS data that Google has stored for the phone

Soghoian
wonders about the legality of accessing a still-operational cell phone.
"Given that an unlocked smartphone will continue to receive text
messages and new emails (transmitted after the device was first seized),
one could reasonably argue that the government should have to obtain a
wiretap order in order to unlock the phone," he argues.

But a US
Magistrate Judge disagreed and granted the warrant the same day it was
filed. Google has not yet responded to our questions about whether it
routinely supplies law enforcement with the information necessary to
unlock Android phones.

Update: Google has provided us a general
statement: "Like all law-abiding companies, we comply with valid legal
process. Whenever we receive a request we make sure it meets both the
letter and spirit of the law before complying. If we believe a request
is overly broad, we will seek to narrow it."

Monday, 19 March 2012

Washington (CNN) -- Tapping away at his computer in the study of
the suburban compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that he called home for
the last years of his life, Osama bin Laden wrote memos urging his
followers to continue to try to attack the United States, suggesting,
for instance, they mount assassination attempts against President Obama
and Gen. David Petraeus.

While he urged his organization on to
attack America, bin Laden was also keenly aware that al Qaeda was in
deep trouble because of the campaign of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan
and also because the brutal tactics of his followers had alienated many
Muslims.

According to senior Obama administration officials who
have reviewed the "treasure trove" of the thousands of documents that
were picked up by the U.S. Navy SEALs from bin Laden's compound in
Abbottabad, the leaders of al Qaeda understood that the group they led
was "beleaguered." CNN was given a briefing this week by senior
administration officials who have been analyzing the documents.

Bin
Laden wrote a 48-page memo to a deputy in October 2010 that surveyed
the state of his organization. He was particularly concerned that al
Qaeda's longtime sanctuary in Waziristan in Pakistan's tribal areas was
now too dangerous because of the campaign of American drone strikes
there that had picked off many of his key lieutenants.

According
to a count by the New America Foundation, the CIA launched a record
number of 118 strikes into the tribal regions during 2010, the year bin
Laden wrote this memo.

Bin Laden advised his followers not to
move around the tribal regions except on overcast days when America's
all-seeing satellites and drones would not have as good coverage of the
area.

He also urged his followers to depart the tribal regions
for the remote Afghan provinces of Ghazni, Zabul and, in particular,
Kunar, pointing out that the high mountains and dense forests of Kunar
provided especially good protection from prying American eyes.

Bin
Laden fretted about his 20-year-old son, Hamza, who had recently been
released from house arrest in Iran, instructing his deputy to tell his
son to move out of Waziristan. He also provided elaborate instructions
about how Hamza might evade the surveillance of the American drones in
the tribal regions by meeting members of al Qaeda inside a particular
tunnel on the road between the western Pakistani town of Kohat and the
city of Peshawar.

During his final days, bin Laden's world was
filled with paranoia. He instructed that Hamza should throw out anything
he had taken with him from Iran as it might contain some kind of
tracking device, and that he should avoid the company of a man who might
have ties to the Pakistani intelligence services.

Bin Laden also
reminded his deputies that all internal communications should be made
by letter rather than by phone or the Internet.

As a result,
according to administration officials, bin Laden had to wait for
responses to his queries to his deputies that could sometimes take up to
two or three months to be delivered -- surely not an efficient way to
run any organization.

Bin Laden also advised his lieutenants that
when they kidnapped someone they should take many precautions during
the negotiating process and also throw away any bags that contained
ransom money because they might also contain a tracking device.

The
spectacular set of self-inflicted mistakes made by al Qaeda's affiliate
in Iraq weighed heavily on the minds of bin Laden and his top advisers.
Privately, they criticized the brutal tactics of al Qaeda in Iraq,
which had provoked a tribal uprising against al Qaeda that had dealt a
large blow to the group's position in Iraq from 2006 onward.

Until
the end, bin Laden remained fixated on attacking the United States,
prodding his deputy to "nominate one of the qualified brothers to be
responsible for a large operation in the U.S."

According to
administration officials, bin Laden's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri,
pushed back, telling bin Laden it was much more realistic to attack
American soldiers in Afghanistan than American civilians in the United
States.

Bin Laden did urge his followers to scope out
opportunities to attack President Obama or Petraeus while they were in
Afghanistan. At the time, Petraeus was the commanding general of NATO
soldiers in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden noted snidely that killing
Obama would pave the way for Vice President Joe Biden to assume the
presidency. The al Qaeda leader said Biden was "totally unprepared" for
the job.

Above all, bin Laden constantly fretted about his media
image, pointing out to his deputies that "a huge part of the battle is
in the media."

For the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, bin
Laden wanted his media team to emphasize particularly that the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq were one of the main reasons for the financial
crisis in the United States. (Bin Laden bought his compound in
Abbottabad with cash, so presumably he didn't quite understand the
dimensions of the subprime mortgage debacle.)

One of his media
advisers, who U.S. officials believe to be the American al Qaeda recruit
Adam Gadahn, suggested bin Laden take advantage of the 9/11 anniversary
in 2011 to record a 'high definition' videotape message that could be
given to all the major American news networks, except to Fox News, which
Gadahn said "lacks neutrality." It doesn't appear that bin Laden made
such a tape.

Administration officials say it is strange that in
all the documents recovered at the bin Laden compound there is no
mention at all of al Qaeda's plot to use liquid explosives to bring down
as many as seven American, British and Canadian passenger planes flying
from Heathrow Airport in 2006. If this plot had succeeded it might have
rivaled 9/11 as a spectacular attack.

Bin Laden moved into his
Abbottabad compound either at the end of 2005 or sometime in 2006 and an
administration official says that, perhaps, information about the
Heathrow plot "got lost in the move."

As violence continues to rock parts of the North, the Federal Government
may have opted to appease some northern states with the payment of 13
per cent derivation on solid minerals with immediate effect.

Vanguard
reported that government was worried about rising insecurity in the
northern part of the Nigeria with vociferous leaders of the north
blaming the situation on poverty and inequality arising from alleged
lopsided revenue allocation against them.

The new portal reported
its sources said President Goodluck Jonathan was considering various
measures, which include the immediate payment of the 13 per cent
derivation to solid mineral-bearing states, a preserve hitherto enjoyed
by the nine oil producing states of Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River,
Edo, Rivers, Delta, Imo, Abia and Ondo since the inception of democratic
rule in 1999.

It said that government’s decision to pay the
money was an indirect way of stemming the growing discontent and
violence in that part of the country.

The Federal Government has
been paying the derivation fund, which runs into trillions of Naira to
only the nine oil-bearing states.

Payment to commence next month

But
Chairman, Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission,
RMFAC, Mr. Elias Mbam, claimed in an exclusive interview that the
payment, which is to commence next month, has no political motive.

Mbam,
an engineer, made it clear that the decision to extend the payment to
solid mineral states was in obedience to the relevant section of the
Nigerian constitution.

The chairman said: “The payment is a
constitutional matter, which states that derivation should not be less
than 13 per cent and derivation is not limited to oil and gas. This also
includes all other mineral resources.

“If you have minerals in
your state and it is developed and it generates revenue into the
federation account, you are entitled to 13 per cent of what is paid into
the federation account.”

The chairman, who did not list the
benefiting states and how much would be shared to them, however, said
the commission would also not be drawn into agitation by some states for
a review of the revenue allocation formula to give them more money.

Section
162 (2) of the Constitution of Nigeria states: “The principles of
derivation shall be constantly reflected in any approved formula as
being not less than 13 per cent of the revenue accruing to the
Federation Account directly from any natural resource.”

Non-oil GDP

N90.4
billion is expected as non-oil Gross Domestic Product by the Federal
Government in the next three years as contained in the revised Medium
Term Financial Framework between 2012 and 2014. The solid mineral states
are expected to earn 13 per cent of the amount.

On the other
hand, the nine oil producing states will share at least N1.9 trillion as
their share of 13 per cent derivation within the period.

The Minna meeting

But
it is not clear whether the leaders of the North would be pacified as
they had only a few days ago called for an urgent review of the revenue
formula.

In a well publicised communiqué, the North rejected the
current revenue allocation law and called for its immediate review,
saying it was lopsided, unfair and detrimental to the interest of all
Nigerians, including the real people of the oil-producing states it
appears to favour superficially.

They argued that oil-producing
states were equally victims because the revenue accruing to their states
on the basis of derivation over-weighted formula was far beyond their
executive capacity to manage, thereby promoting corruption and
hyper-inflation in those states, their neighbours and the country at
large.

The communiqué said: “This revenue allocation law also
stands in violation of the international law with particular reference
to the International Law of the Sea Convention (LOSC). The LOSC treaty,
which has since come into force (1982), is the principal governing law
for all maritime resource issues.”

Thursday, 15 March 2012

ABUJA — Eight suspected members of the Boko
Haram sect accused of complicity in the kidnap and killing of a Briton,
Christopher McManus and his Italian counterpart, Franco Lamolinara, in
Sokoto on March 7, were yesterday paraded in Abuja by the State Security
Service, SSS.

Three of the paraded suspects, Bashir Ibrahim (aka
Adda’u), Ibrahim A. Habibu and Gambo Maiborodi, were aged between 19
and 20 years.

SSS said its investigations revealed that the plot
to abduct the foreigners who were staff of Stabilini Visinoni
Construction Company, from their residence in Birnin Kebbi on May 12,
2011, was masterminded by the Abu Mohammed-led faction of the Boko Haram
Islamic sect.

It added that the said Abu Mohammed died on March
9, 2012 following severe bullet wounds he sustained during a raid at his
hideout at Layin Hanwa area of Zaria on March 7.

A statement by
the SSS, yesterday, said: “After a painstaking investigation process,
the Service made a number of arrests in Adamawa, Katsina, Kaduna, Sokoto
and Kebbi states. The following youths aged between 19 and 20 years,
who were discovered to have conducted surveillance on the victims before
their abduction, were subsequently arrested.

“Further
investigations revealed that the plot was masterminded by the Abu
Mohammed-led faction of Boko Haram in Nigeria. Following a raid on Abu
Mohammed’s hideout at Layin Hanwa area of Zaria on March 7, 2012, Abu
Mohammed and five others were arrested while holding a Shura Council
(the sect’s highest decision making body) meeting.

“In the
ensuing exchange of gunfire, a soldier was killed and his throat slashed
while one service personnel was seriously injured by members of the
Boko Haram sect. Abu Mohammed and the other suspects sustained various
degrees of bullet wounds.

Order to kill captives

“Preliminary
interrogation of the arrested suspects revealed that the guards
protecting the two foreign hostages in Sokoto had been directed to kill
them in the event of any envisaged threat. The arrested suspects,
therefore, advised that a rescue operation be immediately initiated more
so as one of them had escaped during the Zaria raid.

“Consequently,
a joint security operation was launched. One of the arrested suspects,
Mohammed Rabiu Adam (aka Dan Hajiya) who killed the soldier during the
Zaria raid, led the security team from Zaria at about 11pm on
Wednesday,March 7, 2012 to Sokoto and arrived their destination about
0430 hours on March 8, 2012.

“Prior to their arrival, security
operatives had mounted a street cordon and search operation along all
routes around Mabera Estate, Sokoto to prevent any attempt by the guards
to smuggle out the hostages.

“Apparently acting on the directive
of the members of the sect who escaped from Zaria, the guards murdered
the hostages before the arrival of security forces. However, the guards
could not leave the building because of the presence of security men in
the area.

xchange of gunfire

A set of the alleged killers: Bashir Ibrahim (aka Adda’u), Ibrahim A. Habibu and Gambo Maiborodi.

“Upon arrival of security forces at the building where the hostages were
being held, there was a prolonged exchange of gunfire during which
three of the guards were killed while the wife of one of them sustained
bullet wounds and was rushed to the hospital. No life was lost on the
part of security forces though some service personnel sustained gunshot
injuries.”

“While the service commiserates with the families of
the murdered expatriates, it wishes to reiterate that the long arm of
the law will surely catch up with terrorists and perpetrators of evil
wherever they are.

“Once more, we wish to appeal to Nigerians to
remain sensitive to their environment and report suspicious activities
to security agencies.”